Architects: Arup Associates, London, UK     

Location: Doha, Qatar

 

Arup Associates’ design for 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar Showcase is the world’s most sustainable stadium, a radical piece of environmental architecture that was a major driver in Qatar’s sustainability plan and World Cup bid. The 500-seat zero-carbon exemplar stadium is a football stadium like no other. It is a proof-of-concept for innovative cooling and climate control technologies and a development platform to refine these technologies for application across Qatar and potentially across all arid regions. 
 

A key part of the eventual Qatar bid brought to reality the themes of a responsible world cup in a very hot climate and the issues of being able to dissemble it and ship the technologies to other cultures. The stadium has been designed as a hybrid of fast and lightweight construction technologies with local, vernacular means of construction. The showcase form is directly informed by aligning the functional requirements of FIFA for player and spectator comfort and excellence of experience together with a radical environmental architectural language.
 

Externally, this form is developed in response to sun, wind and macro climatic conditions; the showcase has a legible façade and logical form. The resulting language aims to articulate the integrated structural, technological and environmental concepts; whilst providing an enhanced setting for people to interact with the sporting spectacle and the building environment. The Revolving Roof Canopy The compelling rhythmic geometry of The Showcase’s canopy roof plays an important part in the sustainability strategy of the stadium.
 

The canopy roof rotates, in 14-and-a-half minutes, to provide cooling shade within the building and insulated against the hot sun in summer. It is the first roof of its type and is already considered a pioneering move towards a more environmentally responsible approach to stadia architecture. The multi-skinned roof structure is clad with permeable screens of triangulated PVC fabric with a low emissivity coating supported on a secondary steel frame, with an inner cladding of triangulated ‘pillows’ of translucent membrane, providing both thermal performance and light transmittance, keeping radiant and conductive heat out and allowing natural lighting into the arena. Just outside the Showcase is a photovoltaic installation- a sun farm, connected to the structure’s electrical system and the national grid. The venues’ solar panels will operate year-round, continuously exporting electrical energy to the national grid.

Technical info: Triangulated PVC fabric 

Picture credits: Arup Associates